


Never Heard Of Teruta

by hotchocolatedictator



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Chameleon Arch (Doctor Who), Episode Fix-It: s04e13 Journey's End, Fobwatched Time Lord, Gen, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Time Lord Donna Noble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26344876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchocolatedictator/pseuds/hotchocolatedictator
Summary: Donna's got a Time Lord's memories in her head. Everything the Doctor knows, she knows.The only thing is, the Doctor's never heard of a planet called Teruta. And, as far as she knows, neither has Donna.How does she know about it then?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30
Collections: Aliens & Time Machines





	Never Heard Of Teruta

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [hold_my_coat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hold_my_coat/pseuds/hold_my_coat) in the [aliens_and_time_machines_prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/aliens_and_time_machines_prompts) collection. 



> Well, everything's better if you make them a Time Lord, eh? And Donna's way too awesome to kill off. Enjoy!

It felt like her world had exploded.

Lights danced in her head, images, places, people. Donna knew some of them (Martha, the Ood, Pompeii, Rose, London), and she knew the others too, despite never having heard of them (Susan, New Earth, Satellite 5, Weeping Angels). They danced their way around her head, creeping into any gap or crevice they could find, and suddenly she knew more than she’d ever known before, but they weren’t done, it hadn’t all settled.

There wasn’t time for it to settle. Donna saved the world, helped the Doctor get everyone to the right universes (she would miss the Other Doctor - it would’ve been nice not to be the only human-Time Lord mashup about the place - but she’d slipped him her number, and between them they’d be able to find a way to stay in contact), and wondered where they’d go next.

One of the advantages of having a Time Lord’s knowledge was that for once, Donna could suggest a few other planets for them to visit. And ramble about them at length, apparently. 

‘I thought we could try the planet Felspoon. Just because,’ she said, dancing around the TARDIS console in a way that had  _ definitely  _ come from the Doctor, and pretending not to notice the look in his eye. She had his brain, she knew exactly why he was so sad when he looked at her. ‘Or maybe Teruta. Trees as tall as mountains, they say.’

The sad look morphed to confusion.

‘Teruta?’

‘Yeah. Surely you must know it, it has to have come from your head, after all.’

The Doctor rushed over to the console and fiddled with the screen, doing something Donna knew was the intergalactic equivalent of googling, despite what he always claimed when she’d asked before (‘It’s very complicated, Donna, takes  _ years  _ of study to understand.’). 

‘Teruta. Left bit of the Achelois Nebula, trees tall as mountains, indigenous species similar to Earth monkeys. Definitely a real planet, but I’ve never heard of it before. So,’ his voice suddenly got louder, going from muttering to himself to his usual ‘we’re about to be involved in some crazy life-or-death adventure’ voice, and he spun around to face her, ‘how do  _ you  _ know about it?’

It probably didn’t come from his head, then.

* * *

The Doctor rushed her to the medbay, jabbering on about scans and tests and equipment in a manner that would have lost Donna in the technical jargon only a day ago, but now was clear as day. Understanding didn’t make it much better to listen to, though, and it only took a few minutes of the Doctor rambling about all the possible problems she could have before Donna told him firmly to ‘Shut it, spaceman!’

She had him well trained. He shut it.

That didn’t really help either though, as without his incessant noise and chatter Donna had no choice but to listen to the voices in her own head, muttering their own suggestions of what could be wrong with her (apart from the obvious becoming-a-human-Time-Lord-metacrisis-that-would-overload-her-brain thing. Though actually, that took a bit of pressure off it - if she didn’t die she’d forget it all, so how much did it really matter?). She mulled it over as they walked in silence to the medbay.

She perched herself on one of the beds before he’d even asked, and didn’t protest at any of the tests he performed - not even the blood test. Donna  _ hated  _ needles.

The more tests he took, the more confused the Doctor’s expression became. If she hadn’t been so worried herself, Donna would’ve found it hilarious (at last, something even he didn’t understand! If only it had been something more trivial. Like some obscure and irrelevant branch of economics. Or what it was exactly that they put in bath bombs. Why couldn’t it have been bath bombs?). He ran the blood sample through a blood analyser, took her temperature, swabbed skin cells from her cheeks and peered into her eyes with an ophthalmoscope in a manner so similar to what he’d done the first time they’d met that Donna was almost tempted to slap him again, just for the parallel. Eventually, he held up a stethoscope to her chest and listened (and about time too, Donna reckoned. If she’d been the one in charge she’d have done that much sooner). Then he shifted it to the other side and listened again. 

So she had two hearts. Apparently more than just her brain had changed - her physiology had become more like a Time Lord’s too. (A little voice in her head muttered that that was not right, that there was something off about that explanation, but Donna ignored it. What other explanation was there?).

‘I want to run a liver scan, just to make sure, but,’ the Doctor began, looking baffled, worried, and just a little hopeful, ‘well, you seem to be a Time Lord. Or at least,’ he added, before that had fully sunk in, ‘you have the body of one.’

‘I what?’

‘You have the body of a Time Lord,’ he repeated. ‘Body temperature’s 15.6°C, you have two hearts, and your retinas are definitely not human.’

It took Donna a minute to figure out what to say to that (and oh, how she missed the time when the phrase ‘inhuman retinas’ would have bewildered her).

‘Is this happening to him too?’

‘Who?’ The Doctor asked, and Donna wondered if he’d really forgotten that fast, or if he was just pretending.

‘The other metacrisis. Has he got human physiology, or Time Lord? He only has one heart, of course, but what about the rest of him?’

The Doctor was silent for a minute, before eventually replying, ‘I don’t know.’ 

‘I’m going to ask him,’ she decided.

‘You can’t do that! He’s in a parallel universe!’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, spaceman,’ she grinned. ‘Just you watch me.’

* * *

It took several tries, three exploded phones from the worryingly large store of them the Doctor apparently kept in the TARDIS, plus a toaster for good measure, and surprisingly little intervention from the man himself, who was responsible for at least one of the phones and the toaster’s destruction, and probably would have destroyed several more if Donna hadn’t banned him from touching any of her materials (‘you can go blow up your own projects!  _ I’m _ working on this one and if anyone gets to blow it up, it’s me!’).

Eventually, however, they (mostly she) managed to set up an only slightly cobbled-together-with-lots-of-duct-tape-some-string-and-a-bit-of-gum inter universal messaging system.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have his number.

Fortunately, he had hers.

Even more fortunately, she wasn’t the only one trying to make contact.

* * *

_ Conversation started (ERROR) _

_ Unknown Number (+44…): Donna? _

_ Donna: Doctor? _

_ Donna: Not-Doctor? _

_ Donna: What do I call you? _

_ Unknown Number (+44…): Right now I’m thinking John _

_ Donna: Okay John _

_ Contact saved as Hand Boy _

_ Donna: How long has it been for you? _

_ Hand Boy: 2 months _

_ Hand Boy: You? _

_ Donna: 2 hours? _

_ Donna: Great _

_ Donna: What’s your physiology like? _

_ Hand Boy: Same as before _

_ Hand Boy: Apart from the one heart thing  _

_ Hand Boy: And I can’t regenerate either _

_ Hand Boy: Why? _

_ Donna: So I seem to have a Time Lord physiology _

_ Donna: Anyways, gotta go!  _

_ Hand Boy: You what?! _

_ Hand Boy: DONNA WHAT DO YOU MEAN??? _

_ Hand Boy: GET BACK HERE _

* * *

‘He’s got Time Lord physiology, apparently, except for the heart and regeneration,’ Donna reported back.

The Doctor stopped muttering about the impossibility of contacting a different universe without immense amounts of power (which Donna found a bit stupid - after all, she’d just proved it was possible, hadn’t she?) and went back to looking confused and concerned.

‘In that case, why have you not got human physiology?’ he asked the room at large.

‘It could’ve reacted differently?’ Donna offered. ‘I mean, we’re both metacrisises but we aren’t the same,’ she elaborated when the Doctor gave her a look, ‘So maybe he wound up with your looks, and I got your physiology?’

‘No, it wouldn’t be that,’ he answered, ‘I’ve seen something a bit like this before, it doesn’t work like that.’

‘I know you have. If it’s in your head, it’s in mine, remember? And that was different.’

‘Close enough.’

‘Not really.’

The Doctor opened his mouth to argue, decided there probably wasn’t time, and moved on.

‘Maybe leftover huon particles?’ He said, ‘Mixed with artron energy, who knows what could happen?’ 

He’d seen just what artron energy could do to a human, after all. This wasn’t such a stretch. And Donna was nodding along, so clearly he wasn’t the only one who thought it could work…

‘Nope, scratch that,’ the Doctor said, ‘I couldn’t detect any trace of huon particles. Must be something else.’

‘Think, Doctor, think…’ he muttered to himself, pacing around the room, ‘What else could it be?’

He kept pacing, while Donna sat down and did some slightly stiller thinking.

‘Third party interference!’

‘What?’

‘Third party interference,’ the Doctor repeated, ‘If, somehow, a third person, or Time Lord really, had somehow gotten involved in the metacrisis, you might have picked up some of their physiology. Could anyone else have possibly been there?’

Donna looked at him like he was crazy.

‘I was stuck in a spaceship about to be burnt to a crisp. I think if there was anyone else there they’d probably have made their presence known.’

‘Fair point.’ He mulled it over. ‘Mind if I look through your stuff?’

‘Yeah, I do, actually!’

But it was too late. He was already rushing off towards her room.

‘And what, exactly, do you think you’re doing?’ she asked, catching a top the Doctor had sent flying over his head as he ransacked her wardrobe.

‘Looking for something. Do you have any sort of pocket watch?’

‘Why would I have a pocket watch?’

He’d moved on from clothes, and was searching through the contents of her jewellery drawers now. Donna let him go for it mostly - if it could help her, after all - apart from occasionally grabbing something out of his hands with a sharp ‘don’t touch that!’.

Eventually, he made a triumphant noise and stood up, clutching a battered old pocket watch Donna now remembered tended to live in the back of her jewellery drawer. Funny she hadn’t thought of it before, really. It had sort of just… always been there.

The Doctor turned it over, and Donna noticed the markings on the back of it.

Only a day ago, they would have been indecipherable - lines and curves and circles crossing and interconnecting, but nothing more. Now, however, the words were plain as day.

_The_ _Speaker_

‘Is that…?’ She trailed off, overwhelmed by memories whispering their way into the front of her head. Well, not whispering, exactly. More barging in and yelling.

‘A chameleon arch. Yes, it is,’ the Doctor confirmed.

‘I’m a Time Lord?’ Donna paused, then added ‘A proper one, not just a metacrisis one?’

‘Looks like it.’ He handed her the watch. ‘And now, it’s up to you what you do with it.’

Donna didn’t have to ask what he meant. She remembered just fine what would happen to her. Or rather, the Doctor remembered. He also remembered Joan, and Martha, and the pain of having to die, to become someone else, and not just by regenerating.

On the other hand, enough had happened to her already that Donna wasn’t sure opening the watch would actually change that much anymore.

She’d always been a bit impulsive. She opened the watch.

* * *

The woman standing where Donna had been mere seconds before looked the same. She talked the same. She acted the same.

But she wasn’t Donna. She was the Speaker.

‘Hello, Doctor.’

‘Hello,’ the Doctor replied automatically. Then he remembered that he had a whole ton of questions, so he turned to that.

‘Where’ve you been? How did you survive the Time War?’

The Speaker gave a small smile. ‘Got out young. They didn’t catch me out here. I’ve been in hiding for about 40 years now.’

‘And you didn’t go and introduce yourself after you met me?’

‘Well I’d forgotten I was me, hadn’t I?’

She’d got him there.

‘So, what are you called?’

‘I used to go by the Speaker, but I’ve gotten used to Donna Noble. Gone by that about as long as I did the Speaker, and it doesn’t make me sound like a sound system.’

‘Okay, Donna!’ He grinned at her.

‘So, Doctor. Teruta. What do you think?’

‘Sounds brilliant!’

And that was that.

Well. Not quite.

‘Hey, you know what this means?’

‘What?’

‘I can fly the TARDIS too!’

* * *

_ Donna: So you know that thing I said earlier about Time Lord physiology? _

_ Donna: Turns out I’m a Time Lord  _

_ Hand Boy: WHAT?! _

_ Hand Boy: HOW?! _

_ Hand Boy: DONNA THAT IS NOT AN EXPLANATION  _

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it!
> 
> In case anyone's wondering, the Doctor talking about seeing something like this before is a reference to the audio The Hidden Realm, which I will admit I am only aware of after too long on the TARDIS wiki page. In the audio, a human mind is placed inside the Third Doctor's, which is theoretically wiped. Unfortunately the wiping was not totally successful, and the result almost kills both the people involved. If anything, it's the opposite of what happens to Donna - instead of a Time Lord mind in a human's, it's a human mind in a Time Lord's.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
